Oct 17, 2012

The Future of Agriculture May Be Up

Advocates of 'vertical farming' say growing crops in urban high-rises will eventually be both greener and cheaper.

Want to see where your food might come from in the future? Look up.

The seeds of an agricultural revolution are taking root in cities
around the world—a movement that boosters say will change the way that
urbanites get their produce and solve some of the world's biggest
environmental problems along the way.

It's called vertical farming, and it's based on one simple principle:
Instead of trucking food from farms into cities, grow it as close to
home as possible—in urban greenhouses that stretch upward instead of
sprawling outward.

The idea is flowering in many forms. There's the 12-story triangular
building going up in Sweden, where plants will travel on tracks from the
top floor to the bottom to take advantage of sunlight and make
harvesting easier. Then there's the onetime meatpacking plant in Chicago
where vegetables are grown on floating rafts, nourished by waste from
nearby fish tanks. And the farms dotted across the U.S. that hang their
crops in the air, spraying the roots with nutrients, so they don't have
to bring in soil or water tanks for the plants.

However vertical farming is implemented, advocates say the immediate
benefits will be easy to see. There won't be as many delivery trucks
guzzling fuel and belching out exhaust, and city dwellers will get
easier access to fresh, healthy food.

Looking further, proponents say vertical farming could bring even bigger
and more sweeping changes. Farming indoors could reduce the use of
pesticides and herbicides, which pollute the environment in agricultural
runoff. Preserving or reclaiming more natural ecosystems like forests
could help slow climate change. And the more food we produce indoors,
the less susceptible we are to environmental crises that disrupt crops
and send prices skyrocketing, like the drought that devastated this
year's U.S. corn crop. ...